London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

To tweet or not to tweet, that is the confusion. After yesterday’s dissolution of Parliament, politicians are not allowed to refer to themselves as MPs until after the election. Except, it seems, on Twitter.

The question on everyone’s lips at the BBC? “Who will replace Jeremy?” No, not Clarkson but Paxman. When the Newsnight stalwart left last year there were hopes that the Beeb would take the opportunity to recruit a woman to take over his highly-prized election coverage slot now that Paxo is hanging out with Kay Burley on Channel 4. But it seems BBC central casting isn’t stretching far enough outside the box for some people.

Benedict Cumberbatch has called the Garrick’s library his favourite room in England — “an oasis of quiet” where you’re “touching the past of the magic world of theatre” — and, according to the eminent theatre academic David Mayer, it’s the real reason why women should be fighting for the right to join the Covent Garden club.

“Why don’t you let others follow you on Instagram?” a fan of The Satanic Verses author Sir Salman Rushdie inquired of him yesterday on Twitter. “Because when I did, a magazine stole photos and pretended I’d written a piece for them,” replied Rushdie. “Not a tabloid: The Paris Review, no less.”

Almost as debated as who will be the next Prime Minister is who should step into Daniel Craig’s shoes as the next James Bond? The names Dominic West, Eddie Redmayne and Damian Lewis are all knocking around (Hackney-born Idris Elba has ruled himself out). What do the three would-be spies have in common? Like James Bond and his creator Ian Fleming, they are all the well-spoken products of Eton.

This week, Jeremy Clarkson will know his fate, when the investigation into the “fracas” which saw him reportedly punch a producer, led by BBC Scotland director Ken McQuarrie, is completed. But The Londoner is told that this inquiry is not the first. There was a previous internal report, commissioned by the BBC director of television, Danny Cohen, that was never publically aired.

Last month Zac Goldsmith used the pages of The Spectator to attack Ed Balls, who was claiming credit for keeping Britain out of the euro. Goldsmith said it was his father, James, who should get the gold star for it. But now former Prime Minister Sir John Major writes back in the Speccy to say Zac is talking poppycock.

To get into the spirit of Budget day The Londoner has been totting up some figures. A mere three weeks ago Sir Malcolm Rifkind was forced to step down as MP for Kensington after daring to say that a man of a certain background cannot live on £60,000-a-year alone.

On Friday Victoria Borwick landed the plum parliamentary seat of Kensington, which had been rapidly vacated by an embarrassed Sir Malcolm Rifkind last month. This means Lady Borwick will now have two jobs, as deputy mayor to Boris Johnson and as an MP — the seat is pretty safely blue.

Writers and rock stars from Salman Rushdie to Nick Cave crowded into Notting Hill’s 20th Century Theatre last night to celebrate the launch of The Kindness, a novel by Polly Samson, pictured in yellow above with her husband David Gilmour and his daughter Sara.

Times cartoonist Peter Brookes has long-lampooned Ed Miliband by drawing the Labour leader in the likeness of goofy-faced Wallace, of Wallace and Gromit fame, but has his creator, Nick Park, had enough?

Champagne glasses down and a drum roll please — after weeks of well-heeled anticipation and cut-glass rumours flying around, the six-strong shortlist for Kensington’s new Conservative candidate will be revealed tomorrow.

Who’d have thought the small and furry Sylvanian Families would find themselves dragged into the war on terror? Proving that art still has the power to shock, an image mocking Islamic State — in which an idyllic picnic scene is interrupted by “MICE-IS”, a group of radicalised jihadi Sylvanians, brandishing rifles, knives and a scooter — has been going quietly viral.

Singer Paloma Faith won her first Brit Award last week and gave a moving, if rambling, speech applauding the world’s grafters. Now she is putting her warm-up act where her heart is: she’s hired Owen Jones to be the opener for her UK tour, which begins later this month.

Could the former prince of The Guardian be returning to the paper to claim his throne? The Londoner hears that Newsnight editor Ian Katz, deputy editor of the Guardian until 2013, has decided to throw his hat in the ring.